ON TOP of looking after Brendan Cherry’s twin-turbo big-block Chev-powered VL Calais at Street Machine Summernats 32, Frank Gonzalez from All Sparks Performance in Melbourne also brought along a customer’s Ford FG Falcon ute to have a play in the Haltech Horsepower Heroes Forced-Induction Six-Cylinder class.

Internally the motor has copped forged rods and pistons, with Stage 5 Crow Cams up top in the ported cylinder head. Sitting on a 6Boost high-mount manifold the power-adder is a Garrett GTX45 snail pushing approximately 28psi thanks to one of Haltech’s new plug-and-play ECUs, which also controls the flow-rate of the E85 the engine swallows.

Behind the tough Barra, the stock ZF six-speed transmission has been binned in favour of a three-speed TH400 auto, though Frank admits the rear-end still needs development.

“This thing is going straight to Gazzard Brothers once we get back to Melbourne,” he says. “We need them to do the rear-end, then maybe we’ll see what it can do at the track.”

Despite making 1104hp at the hubs on 28psi on Saturday, Frank and the All Sparks boys were lucky to get the into Sunday’s finals as they spent most of the day with the axles on the MPW Performance dyno hall floor.

“I put a little more timing in it for Sunday, but we ran out of time to make big changes as we found snapped wheel studs when we went to qualify it on Saturday,” sighs Frank. “We spent the whole of Saturday afternoon pulling the axles out and running around trying to find wheel studs, and we only just got two runs in before the dyno closed so we could qualify for the finals!”

With one extra PSI on board it cracked 1112hp on 29psi to take out the Forced-Induction Six-Cylinder class on Sunday, 364hp clear of second-place.